Gert Jonkers started out as a country-and-western singer before turning to journalism in the early 1990s, eventually becoming a fashion critic for the Dutch national newspaper De Volkskrant. Jop van Bennekom graduated as a graphic designer with the launch of RE-Magazine, a one-man publication that ran for twelve issues with a constantly shifting design identity. The two met in 1997 while working at Blvd, a sophisticated Dutch cultural magazine, and discovered they shared an almost identical vision for what publishing could be. In 2001 they created Butt, the pale-pink gay culture title that became an instant international sensation. Four years later, they did something like the opposite.
FANTASTIC MAN launched from Amsterdam in 2005 as a biannual men's fashion magazine printed largely in black and white, with rule lines, a two-column layout, and pages upon pages of text at a time when most fashion publications were becoming picture books. The premise was deceptively simple: interview interesting, well-dressed men of substance — not models, not teenagers, but grown-ups who had lived a little — and treat menswear not as seasonal trends to be catalogued but as character made visible. David Beckham, Helmut Lang, Ai Weiwei, Raf Simons, Bret Easton Ellis: the cavalcade of men on its covers has been photographed by Juergen Teller, Bruce Weber, and Wolfgang Tillmans, among others.
The magazine now sells 48,000 copies worldwide and has spawned a sister publication, The Gentlewoman, a magazine for COS, and a publishing partnership with Penguin called The Happy Reader. Its influence can be seen everywhere from luxury menswear e-commerce to the casting of real men in advertising campaigns. But the core identity has barely changed since issue one: frank conversation, insightful reportage, glorious photography, and the conviction that what's more sexy than a handsome man is a whole page of text next to him to read.
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